In the staff room of the public library where I worked for 10years, a British World War II poster advised us toKEEP CALM AND CARRY ON. In a profession whose currency is information that multiplies by the second, keeping calm could be a challenge.

No doubt every librarian has a recurring nightmare, and this was mine: With a long line of patrons waiting, I frantically search my computer for a title. Yet as I type, sand slowly, inexorably swamps my keyboard. The sands of time, no doubt, intent on rendering me obsolete. When I started at the library, saying you disliked technology was still acceptable. By the time I left, that admission would earn you a pitying, not to say incredulous, look.

Marilyn Johnson gets all this and more in "This Book Is Overdue! How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us all."

She pays homage to a profession undergoing a mind-boggling transition, and describes a librarian as a navigator whose "job is to create order out of the confusion of the past, even as she enables us to blast into the future."

Johnson gets giddy describing librarians whose avatars do reference work on virtual-reality sites, librarians who blog and catalog zines, librarians who literally take to the streets when necessary. She pays tribute to the librarian "missionaries" who travel to developing countries, teaching citizens how to enlist electronic resources in the cause for economic and human rights.

This cheerful book is full of personalities, including four heroes who defend patron confidentiality in defiance of the Patriot Act, and a special-collections librarian stoically watching his scholarly treasures shoved aside in favor of more popular offerings.

Johnson doesn't skimp on the trials of faltering computer systems, or the gross things patrons can leave on the shelves.

In thefall, the novelist Ann Patchett, speaking at that crown jewel, the Cleveland Public Library, confessed she was baffled by arguments thata government-run health-care system can never work. What, Patchett wondered, about that other publicly funded entity, that equalizer of opportunity, that provider of indispensable resources, namely the library? Was anyone going to argue it didn't work?

I retired from my library job in December, along with four others employees. Budget constraints have meant that none of us wasreplaced.

Though spread thinner than ever, the remaining "civil servants and servants of civility" still find nothing more satisfying than locating the information you need -- whether it's how to get your baby to sleep through the night or how to post a resume, the key to quantum physics or the words to that song your grandmother used to sing, or just the right title to light a fire inside your reluctant reader son.

Chances are good that if you read this book, it'll be a library copy. When you return it, even if it's overdue, smile at that nice person behind the desk.

Tricia Springstubb is an author and critic in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. She was a proud member of the Shaker Heights Public Library book-cart precision drill team.

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